Machines that automatically sever an insulation displacement contact from a carrier strip, insert the contact into an insulating connector housing, terminate a wire to the contact, and trim the end of the wire flush with the edge of the housing, are necessarily complex and require that certain of the operational steps be performed after other steps are completed. In particular, the trimming to length of the wire is done after it is terminated to the contact so that the wire is firmly held in place by the contact during trimming. This requires two separate operations that occur sequentially, that is, after the contact is inserted into the housing a cutting blade is actuated to sever the terminated wire. It is desirable to overlap some of these operational steps, such as the insertion step and the wire trimming step, to reduce the overall cycle time of the machine. However, such overlapping is dependent, in part, on timing and the length of the insertion stroke. Overlapping is especially difficult to achieve in cases where the parts are extremely small resulting in the need for a relatively short insertion stroke. In these cases lost motion mechanisms and other similar devices are used to accomplish the operations, however, without the desired overlapping. However, these devices increase the complexity of the machine and its cost to manufacture and to maintain. Other means for performing the insertion and trimming functions is by utilizing separate actuators. This solution, of course, also increases the complexity and cost of the machine. What is needed is a machine, for terminating very small contacts to wires, that overlaps the insertion function with the wire trimming function so that the two functions are done concurrently during the insertion stroke with a single actuator.